“The attachment relationship provides the springboard for autonomy.”  – Alan Sroufe

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There is a curious paradox in the way children grow and develop. The more secure their attachment, the freer they become. The more deeply rooted they are in love and trust, the farther they can reach into the world.  An overly dependent child clings like a shadow, too often too close. When you walk away, the shadow follows. When you move toward your shadow, it moves away. In child rearing and human development, there is a delicate balance between closeness and distance, between protection and freedom.

Children need their parents, teachers, and caregivers to be present and reliably available, emotionally attuned, ready to comfort, guide, and be models of support and problem-solving. But, children also need permission to explore, to make mistakes, to face difficulty and uncertainty. Without this gradual widening of their world, the child cannot learn self-reliance or initiative. For parents, especially those whose deepest instinct is to protect, growing independence can feel like a loss.

Greater autonomy is particularly difficult for parents of children with developmental delays or disabilities. Their close parenting vigilance has been necessary, even lifesaving. They learned to anticipate every need and how to prevent discomfort or harm before it happens. For them, the idea that their child must encounter challenge, that frustration and error are not only unavoidable but essential for growth, can seem cruel. However, it is through those very experiences, safely contained and thoughtfully mediated, that the child’s competence begins to take shape.

In the early stages, young children, especially those who struggle with difficulties, do not face these challenges alone. Their parents and adult mediators join them closely, they play, they inspire, they guide. In this shared learning space, the child and their adult caregivers gradually build bridges between continual supervision and more self-guided exploration. From each success and each misstep, the child builds the early prerequisites for learning: persistence, curiosity, problem-solving, and self-confidence.

Attachment and Autonomy

The developmental psychologist, Alan Sroufe, wrote that “autonomy and attachment are not opposites. The attachment relationship provides the springboard for autonomy, and the development of autonomy brings about a transformation in the child-parent attachment.” Attachments endure even as independence grows. The goal is to increase skills, understanding, confidence, and self-reliance, not separation. Child/adult relationships become more grounded in shared experiences and trust rather than constraint and control.

But these developmental transitions are not easy or automatic. There are tensions in the back and forth between holding on and extending more freedom; between the parent’s desire to protect and the child’s need to explore and to take risks; between the comfort of dependence and the necessity of growing self-direction. It can be destabilizing, even painful, for parents and siblings, and even for the child themselves.

For families of children with developmental challenges, small steps into the world carry the possibility of danger, of failure, of misunderstanding, of confusion, or panic. Parents don’t hold on too tightly out of possessiveness or selfishness, but from love, duty, fear, and earlier years of caregiving.

For parents to feel secure enough to allow their child’s growing independence, they need to know that increasing autonomy does not mean abandonment. Independence can be safely supported. It begins with small, structured steps, with environments that are predictable, with meaningful choices that are manageable and within limits. Gradual independence, like learning, is built through thoughtful mediation and careful scaffolding. Providing just enough support to succeed, and just enough space for self-motivation and effort.

A Wider View

Parents learn to notice and accept their child’s growing competencies. Each success becomes evidence of increasing skills and expanding capacities. When small victories are recognized and shared with the whole family and the members of the child’s development team, worries soften and there is growing optimism.. Parents see a wider view. They don’t just see a child with disabilities, a child younger than their age who needs protection, but an increasingly capable human being learning to live a fuller, more meaningful life.

This transformation is not one-sided. Parents are also engaged in a developmental process. Their journey parallels the child’s. While the child learns to understand, plan, and act, rather than just react, the parent learns to trust. Parents must endure the child’s difficulties that come with growing independence without always holding the child back or rushing to the rescue. It is a different kind of caregiving, one that requires as much inner growth as outer guidance.

In the language of Parallel Development, the child’s growing independence is mirrored by the parent’s evolving changes from a vigilant protector to a thoughtful guide, offering support where and when needed. The goal is an increasing and reciprocal self-reliance. A relationship of mutual respect in which the child’s exploration and stretching and the parent’s confidence and ease expand together.

Challenge that Strengthens

The prerequisites for growing self-reliance lie in trust, empathy, and accurate observation of changes being made. The growing sense of when to step forward and when to step back; how to distinguish between nearly certain failure and eventual success, between struggles that overwhelm and challenges that strengthen.

Parenting strategies involve supervising and mediating the learning of progressively adaptive life skills as they increase the child’s freedoms within safe boundaries. Respecting their child’s choices and efforts, accepting their heroes and role models (if not patently negative), and gradually offering more encouragement and less restriction. Parents are parents and will always maintain a connection, supporting their child’s interests, allowing increasing purpose and responsibilities, and recognizing their growing need to help and to contribute.

Progress can be seen not only in the child’s expanding abilities but in the parent’s growing calm and confidence. Dependence evolves into mutual respect. As the child moves forward and outward, the parent learns to trust. Attachment changes form but always remains essential for development and fulfillment.

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